At 89 (!) Clint Eastwood can still entertain with style and emotionally engage his audience, and he does both in this absorbing story of injustice that was inspired by true events. Clint is director only in this outing, and he shares with us a well-researched and very human tale. Richard Jewell (an impressive Paul Walter Hauser) was a security guard at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta who spotted a suspicious package which turned out to contain explosives and a timer. He alerted authorities, who quickly began moving the crowds away from the danger. Because of Jewell, when the explosives went off fewer people were killed and injured than would have otherwise been the case. While he was first hailed as a hero, the FBI (Jon Hamm playing the lead agent) mistakenly came to believe — mostly because of confirmation bias — that Jewell, an odd duck in the opinion of most, fit the profile of a lone bomber. The authorities (and the media) made life a living hell for Jewell and his mother (Kathy Bates), and defending him a huge challenge for Jewell’s lawyer, played by the always dependable Sam Rockwell. Not a subtle telling, but subtlety isn’t needed in a story like this.
